Aiming high and making progress

I’ve got lots of thing in progress. Recently, in fact, I remembered a couple of series I started plotting out but hadn’t started writing. Things are moving along, not quite glacially, but certainly slower this year than in previous years.

So this month, I’m taking a break. Maybe it seems counter-intuitive: if I’m going slowly, won’t things be even worse if I turn my back on my current projects? Well, frankly, it won’t make a lot of difference to most of them. However, I think I need a change of pace, doing something different.

Forward Motion (the writing forum I’ve been hanging out at since 2003) runs a challenge every May called Story-A-Day, or SAD. I’ve never gotten more than ten stories in the month, and some years, I haven’t even gotten one. This year, though, I’m going for full-out insanity. I may not actually complete a story each day — on days that I do flash, I might finish two; other stories might take me a few days to draft. I would like to finish the month with 31 new stories, of whatever length. Some of those will go up as Friday flash, fresh and new and straight to you, my readers. Others will get spell-checked, read to make sure they make sense, edited if necessary, and submitted to varying markets.

I may not get all 31. I’d like to get between 25 and 31, but the truth is, even if I “only” finish the month with five new shorts plus the Friday flash pieces, I’ll be ahead of where I am now.

That’s my current project.

What are you up to this month?

Today’s post was inspired by the topic “Current projects”– May’s topic in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour — an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Be sure to check out the next posts in the series, by Sandra Barret and D. M. Bonanno.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out their thoughts on first stories, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour by checking out the group site. Read and enjoy!

8 Comments

I’m feeling a bit adrift at the moment. Last week I finished a crazy month of writing big Ks every day to crack the second half of my YA steampunk novel. Then a long weekend of querying, which is bonkers in its own way. And then…. nothing.

I need a decent rest after that marathon so won’t rush things, but I want to get into something soon. Just not sure what yet.